PrC (MHi); entirely in TJ’s hand, including one set of brackets identified in note 1 below; faint.

The extract is from a letter Thomas Tingey wrote as a report to Benjamin Stoddert. The Philadelphia Gazette printed the letter in full on 16 Feb. 1799. As a young man Tingey, English-born, had served in the British naval service. He had experience as a merchant captain in the West Indies trade and was living in New Jersey in September 1798 when, during the congressional recess, John Adams named him a captain in the U.S. Navy. The Ganges under Tingey’s command cruised the Windward Passage during the winter of 1798–99 with particular orders “to capture or destroy the Armed Vessels fitted out under the Authority of France.” Early in January 1799 he spoke to the commanders of three British warships off the coast of Saint-Domingue (NDQW description begins Dudley W. Knox, ed., Naval Documents Related to the Quasi War between the United States and France, Washington, 1935–38, 7 vols. description ends , Nov. 1798–Mch. 1799, 84–5, 283–7; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States … to the Termination of the Nineteenth Congress, Washington, D.C., 1828 description ends , 1:308).

Late arret: see Jacob Van Staphorst to TJ, 25 July 1798.